


his love immortalised

by morresend



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: M/M, i'm so sorry guys it's just really fucking sad, very brief mentions of everyone's death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-28 22:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20433134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morresend/pseuds/morresend
Summary: Fjord loves Caduceus, until the day he dies.





	his love immortalised

**Author's Note:**

> thank you SO much to cruixe for the gorgeous art! <33

Fjord is convinced of one thing, and that thing is that he loves Caduceus Clay. 

He loves him amidst the legend of the Mighty Nein, before Caduceus knows about it and long after. He loves him through their failures and triumphs, loves him when stories end and turmoil settles. 

His adoration never fades for the person who has _ chosen _ to love him so timelessly, and wants to make a home with him for the rest of their lives. He loves Caduceus when they live together, growing trees and making teas and waking up together under the morning sun. 

He loves Caduceus as the years fall by like a waterfall. As Fjord's jet hair turns slowly grey, and the white strip dulls along with it. He shies away from Caduceus's touch, who is still so vibrantly pink in spring and summer, but cannot resist leaning into his love eventually. 

When his joints ache every time he walks around the garden for too long, Caduceus whittles him a walking staff of strong wood. Fashioned by young, fluent fingers.

Fjord feels old, his body silhouetted of who he used to be; constantly, painstakingly illuminated by Caduceus, almost unchanging in his age. But he still loves him. 

When his voice begins to die in his throat and his heart feels thin like a leaf, he still loves Caduceus. 

He still loves Caduceus when he goes to sleep beside him one night

and never wakes up.

  


There is a ritual that Caduceus follows every time he buries a body. 

He will first take care of the mourning family, offer them cups of tea and kind words, reassurances that their deceased are in a better place. 

It has never been more difficult. 

His hands shook when he touched Fjord's cold, cold cheek, and they shake now. He cannot make tea. He will smash a teacup, and he cannot lose two things this morning. 

He sits in the middle of the room, and the rug feels itchy and irritable even through his clothes. 

Usually, Caduceus would consider where to place the grave, where the soil is most fertile and will grow the most flowers. 

But now, he thinks only of Fjord. Thinks of his grin hidden behind a gathered bunch of flowers. The taste of his lips. Everything he loved and hated, all the things he'd said that made Caduceus feel fluttery like his body was made of butterfly wings. 

He's never cried over a death before - because it is supposed to be a good, _natural thing_. A corpse amongst consecrated soil is a gift to the Wildmother, and Caduceus is the lucky tiding-bearer. 

This does not feel lucky. 

He touches the tear that dampens the fur beneath his eye, wants to question why he's crying like this. 

But all he can think is Fjord, Fjord, _Fjord._

Dead, dead, _dead._

Caduceus Clay sits crossed-legged on the floor and cries. The sounds of sniffs and sobs are almost alien in his own bassy tone, and he feels reactionary repulsion to it. But no matter how much he asks himself for peace, he cries. 

  
  


By the time he can muster the strength to go outside, the sun is at its apex in the sky. 

Everything is so quiet. 

He can hear the birds and the flowers and maybe the ants crawling on the floor but no Fjord. 

No hand entwined in his own. The air is wordless and barren. 

Caduceus resists the choking pull of the silence. 

He sits down somewhere else, between the graves who sing a new story to him today, lights incense, and closes his eyes. 

Like a ship drunk on rough waters, his mind careens between thoughts of Fjord and reaching out to the Wildmother. 

It is a struggle, but finally, the air turns warm around him, the sun's gaze magnifying affectionately at his back. She is here. 

He needs a mother's love so badly. He needs Fjord so badly.

"Fjord is-_ dead _?" perhaps it's a question, perhaps it's how his voice breaks on the final word. 

Caduceus was brought up with death laced in his drink and his heritage, and he was fine with it. Death was beautiful, death was a _gift,_ death is a _thief._ A thief. 

"Yes." 

The Wildmother sounds sorrowed, a gentle breath of the word at his neck. A hand rests at the crown of Caduceus's head and strokes his hair, sympathy trickling down his hair with every touch. How will he live without Fjord to hold him? 

"And - and it is natural. Death is a gift and I'll - I'll give him t- to you, and, _ you _-" 

The palm on his head does not withdraw as Caduceus hunches forward and sobs. All he can feel is the negative space around him, the presence of his and Fjord's (just his) patron cooled by the absence of his happiness. 

What can he say to her? She has looked after him for so long, when he was by Fjord's side. Now, Fjord is gone and he must bury him, and all his love along with him. 

"you will look after him?" 

Caduceus feels so small and so immature again, asking if the Wildmother will look after Fjord. If she will cradle his death in her arms and hold his carcass and the flowers that grow from him, cradle him like a child. 

If only he could be a child again. 

_ He is not far from me, my child. _, says the cool breeze of wind that sweeps against his cheek. 

Fjord has been so good to her, so kind and so _ purely _loyal, surely he will live decadent in her domain now. It sounds so lonely. 

"Why?" Caduceus proffers the question in a broken voice, for a reason he cannot discern. He sounds so very sad, and he hates it. 

The Wildmother carries on petting his hair, and she is silent, and he… does not like that _ one bit _. 

"Why?" he asks again, and something horribly raw begs to know _ why _ Fjord, _ why _ now, why is it natural and why can't he have one more day and why does he feel so lonely it hurts and why is she silent and why why-

"_ WHY?" _he yells out to the wind, and it tears at his throat. 

He's not used to raising his voice, has hardly _ ever _ done it around Fjord. It hurts to yell. 

The wind goes cold and birds flock from the trees around him, flying off somewhere warmer, somewhere quieter. 

The Wildmother knows he should understand, and Caduceus knows this too. But when it's Fjord, the light in his dark days and the love in his brightest ones, the man who he has given his entire heart and body to… 

it's just not the same. 

Nothing is the same. 

He breathes in cold air and lets it invade his lungs, its sharpness doing little to cut through the numbness. It is all-encompassing, the weight of a lover's mourning always too heavy for anyone to bear. But he must do it anyway, today and tomorrow and all the times that the sun rises on the land with Caduceus Clay on it. It makes him so tired he wants to sleep for a thousand seasons; after he has put Fjord under the soil and screamed out a dozen prayers for him, perhaps he will try that.

Perhaps time will lessen the ache of his heart, and will grow the flowers from his sweet body that let his love be immortalised. 

  
  


Eventually, the Mighty Nein will visit. 

They will be so sad, but not as sad as Caduceus. He will make them tea, without Fjord to help him gather the leaves. They'll chat about their new friends and lovers, and old friends, and dead friends and lovers. 

Caleb and Beau will be old and grey, but they will visit all the same. 

And they will die too, just like Fjord. 

Jester will be next. 

Then Nott. 

Then Yasha. 

And, after more centuries spent alone, Caduceus will take himself to the Wildmother as well. 

Where he can see Fjord again. 

**Author's Note:**

> someone had to say it


End file.
